News
Thomson Reuters and CareEvolution develop innovative medical record
system
22 August 2008
Thomson Reuters and CareEvolution are working together to deliver an
alternative to the chronological medical record — an application that
groups patient data by disease or medical episode. The web-based Medical
Episode Groupe' provides current patient information — logically
organised, at the point of care — to help physicians make sound medical
decisions and enhance disease management and quality of care.
US company CareEvolution provides secure interoperability solutions
that link diverse technology platforms for medical records. Under this
collaboration, output from the Medical Episode Grouper (MEG), developed
by Thomson Reuters, would be integrated into CareEvolution's 'clinical
cockpit' to deliver comprehensive patient medical histories of all
medications and treatments.
"Caregivers tell us they need access to a community-wide health
history for a patient, but they are already overwhelmed with too much
information. Dumping more data from more clinics and hospitals onto the
doctor's desktop is not going to be accepted or effective," said Vik
Kheterpal, MD, principal at CareEvolution.
"Organising the discrete, fragmented, healthcare data we get from
medical claims, acute and ambulatory electronic medical records and
other sources into disease-based clusters is critical to deal with this
cognitive overload," he said. "Delivering patient information in this
way enables clinicians to easily find the links between diseases and
complications so they can better manage the patient's care."
Treatment of a given disease or medical complaint typically involves
several healthcare events — such as a visit with a primary care doctor,
prescriptions, visits to urgent care centres or the emergency room,
consultations with specialists and perhaps admission to a hospital or
surgery centre.
CareEvolution uses a federated data model to pull patient data from
different sources into a single unified view. Under this collaboration,
it would use the web-based MEG service to produce a clinically grouped
view — streamlining information that represents a patient's lifetime of
healthcare events across pharmacy, laboratory, acute care, and
ambulatory care settings.
"MEG enables physicians to quickly grasp the complexity and severity
of a patient's condition," said Jon Newpol, executive vice president for
the Healthcare business of Thomson Reuters. "Coupled with
CareEvolution's software, this patient profile can provide physicians
with a timely, easy-to-use summary of their patients' medical care."
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